Mythulu – One Thousand And One Parsecs

September Shorts 2022: Hunter, Lover, Cyborg, Slave

Whenever I do these short story challenges, the first one always feels like it’s super hard, and I end up spending way more time on it than I thought I would. It also usually ends up a lot longer than I would like. Hopefully the rest of them come faster and easier than this one did.

With that said, I’m actually fairly happy with how this one turned out. It’s kind of a cyberpunk space opera story, dark and gritty, but hopefully with some interesting twists and turns. Also, it’s not a nihilistic story at all, so it kind of breaks from a lot of cyberpunk with that. I really can’t stand nihilistic fiction.

Once again, I used the Mythulu cards to come up with the main story idea. Here are the cards that I drew:

JUNGLE: Supports a broad spectrum of life, so competition is fierce. Naturally brings out the strongest, biggest, brightest in everyone.
BIOLUMINESCENT: Light emitted by a living organism.
HUNTER: Searching with intent to kill. Draw +1 Relationship to explore motive.
- FAMILIAR: Conduit for magic. Both parties are powerless and ordinary when alone. Represents how relationships transform us for the better.
MAN AND MAKER: Maker transforms a raw, useless thing into something extraordinary. Maker’s relationship with creation reveals narcissism or humility.
WANTED: Politically important and resisting subpoena or arrest. Authorities are willing to pay bounty to locate.
CYBORG: Trades a pound of flesh for superhuman advantage.
CHAOS: Source of evolution. Self-aware beings require background chaos for sanity. The amount needed varies.

That last card, CHAOS, got me to think about everything else in a certain way, but by the time the story was finished I don’t think I’d explicitly included that element in the story. That usually happens with at least one of the cards when I do this exercise: it influences how I think about everything else, but then I forget it while writing the actual story.

The thing that made everything come together was the idea of having an AI familiar, like a magic familiar, except with artificial intelligence. This AI is really just a projection of the user’s own subconscious, but augmented with artificial processes so that it interacts with the user like an intelligent, autonomous being.

My wife is getting her PhD in computer science, and she believes that we may never create a superintelligent AI because there appears to be a tradeoff between specialists and generalists. In other words, AI is very good at specializing in specific tasks or areas, but humans are very good at generalizing across all tasks or areas. It may simply be that to create an AI that is good at generalizing, you have to sacrifice its ability to specialize.

The idea of an AI familiar gets around that, because it piggybacks on the user’s own mental processes to do its generalizing, without the user being able to notice. That’s probably not how it works in real life, but this is a sufficiently advanced technology that I don’t feel bad about using a little hand-wavium to explain it. Besides, it makes for a pretty interesting story.

Final word count for the rough draft clocks in at just under 8,200 words. I will probably cut that down below 7,000 after workshopping it, making it a short story by SFWA’s definitions, which (unfortunately) are industry standard.

New Short: The Library of Fate

I actually wrote this one before September, but since I forgot to mention it then, I thought I’d blog about it now. The rough draft is only about 3,700 words, and is basically a time travel / alternate universe story set in a fantasy world, where the evil sorceror weaves possibilities in order to magically alter the timeline.

Once again, this is a Mythulu-inspired story, though instead of drawing a bazillion cards, I only drew six (one for each card type). The cards I drew are:

PROSTITUTE: Selling time, body, safety, passions, or dreams to make a living. A few aware of their vulnerability find honor in their work.
LIBRARY: Sanctuary for knowledge. Doesn’t necessarily have 4 walls.
EXPERIMENT: A controlled investigation where subject does not understand the test. Undertaken to resolve conflicting theories about the world.
DYING: Terminally ill, facing extinction, or on a trajectory of colliding beliefs that will rewrite identity forever.
WOVEN: Fibers lovingly tangled into a useful shape.
AETHER: Matter that is nothing yet, but can become anything. Pure possibility.

It was that last card that started to move everything into place. Others, like the prostitute card or the experiment card, kind of got overlooked in the formulation of the story, though they did serve as useful initial prompts to get me thinking. But once I figured out a way to relate those aspects to the rest of the story idea, they morphed into something else entirely—which is fine.

Got feedback for this one from my writing group yesterday. A lot of things about this story worked really well for them, but they were confused about how the magic works, which is something I need to rectify. Ironically, there was not enough exposition or info dumping in this one. Fixing that will probably add another 500 to 1k words, so I’m expecting the final draft of this story to come in somewhere between 4.5k and 5k.

But it’ll have to wait for a few weeks at least, as I work on finishing the first few stories for September’s writing challenge!

New Short Story Writing Challenge

I self-publish a new short story every month, and I try to keep at least six in the hole so that I have some time to send each one to the magazines and anthologies. Right now, I’ve only got three, soon to be two, so I need to write some short stories. Sounds like it’s time for a writing challenge!

So for the month of September, in addition to working on Children of the Starry Sea (though at a slower pace), I plan to write 40k words of short stories—enough for a small collection, which should fill out the buffer for a while. That comes to between 1,500 and 1,800 words a day, which honestly shouldn’t be that hard, since once I tend to get going on a short story, I’ll write it to the end, whether that’s 2k words or 4k words. I’ll spend the next few months workshopping them through my writing group and cleaning them up, then put them out on submission.

For purposes of this challenge, I’m going to include some of the short story fragments I have lying around, since those need to be cleaned up and turned into something useful. Also, I’ll definitely be working on some Zedekiah Wight stories, since I desperately need more of those to put out into the world. Also some Christopher Columbus stories, though it looks like those are going to get picked up by one of the magazines soon, so look out for that.

As an incentive, if I manage to accomplish this writing challenge, I’ll buy myself a couple of things on my Amazon wish list. I tend to put things on that list and forget about them, or else decide that it’s not worth spending the money, so it should be a good incentive. And I’ll post about each story as I write them. One of the things I want to do is to go through the whole Mythulu deck and write at least one story with each card. This would be a great time to do that.

So get ready! This should be a lot of fun!

Short Story: Christopher Columbus, Treasure Hunter

So I finished this one a couple of days ago, but I forgot to write about it then, so I’m writing about it now. Hard to say much when this is the second in a series and the first one hasn’t come out yet, but I’m actually quite pleased with how this one turned out.

The first draft of “Christopher Columbus, Wildcatter” was honestly a bit of a mess. I think the main problem was that I was trying to cram too much into it, and when you look at all the Mythulu cards that I tried to use, it’s not hard to see how that could be the case.

When I workshopped it through my writing group, they suggested that I break it into two stories, and that’s exactly what I did—except that over the course of rewriting them, both stories took on a life of their own. The first one, “Christopher Columbus, Wildcatter,” more or less followed the original draft up to about the 2/3rds mark, but this story was only loosely based on the second half, and I ended up rewriting most of it from scratch.

I’m really happy with how it turned out, though, and I was even able to keep it under 7k words, which I didn’t think I was going to be able to do. These Christopher Columbus stories definitely follow a formula, though, so I don’t think I’m in danger of finding myself writing a novel when I think I’m writing a short story. Though taken all together, these stories probably will turn into something of a novel, which is fine.

I’d post an excerpt, but this story is out on submission, so I don’t want to void the first publication rights. You’ll just have to bear with me until the first story is out!

Spring Shorts 2022 #4: The Freedom of Second Chances

I’m really happy with how this short story turned out. It pushes the edge in a lot of interesting ways, with the main character having to choose between duty and honor and doing what is right, and a forced abortion situation that puts the lie to the “women’s right to choose” insanity. It will probably get me blacklisted at a few more magazines, but at this point I really don’t care.

Once again, I used the Mythulu cards to come up with this story. Here are the ones I used:

CLONE: Many available forms, including: duplicate, twin, rebirth, alternative life path manifested, time traveler overlap, actor, understudy, etc. Can even mean a second chance or a relapse.
ABANDONED: Indicates a severe problem in the environment that prior ihabitants were unable to solve. Draw +1 Habitat.
- COASTAL: Peaceful threshold where the ocean meets land. Known for caves, karsts, and dunes. Represents unsolvable relationship problems.
ERODED: Extensive, exponential deterioration of a foundation due to long-neglected defense.
MARRIAGE OF HONOR: A permanent relationship initiated to help someone else avoid shame or discredit.
TATTOO: Marked to identify, warn, or remember.
GUILTY: Responsible for the worst thing that has happened recently to everyone around them.
BODYGUARD: Primary purpose is to protect something else, at any cost.
VELVET: Labor-intensive weave of fabric that mimics the soft fur on a young buck’s antlers. Worn to inspire reverence or respect.
BLOOD: Represents the energy invested to keep something alive. The only element which affects the soul beyond mortality. Can taint or purify.
SLIPPERY: Wants freedom and is hard to hold onto. Often enjoys the chase.
BUREAUCRAT: Keeps others in bondage with words. Diverts enemies toward illusions to exhaust them into giving up.
CATALYST: Initiates or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected. Gifted at getting things moving.
NECRO: Things that were once living, but no longer are. Draw again to decide what died. Draw +1 Habitat or Element.
- PET: Healthy codependence with a clear heirarchy, usually between members of different species.
TORN: Forcibly separated parts, which often continue to exist separately. Indicates a lost privilege or reduction in status. Symbol of anger.
SIGIL: Symbols that have power to force or bind. Used in communities to rally groups together.

I’m going to keep going through until I’ve used all of the Mythulu cards in a story at least once. So far, they’ve proven to be an interesting way to not only generate story ideas, but to send my stories off in different and interesting directions. It usually takes me a little while (or sometimes a couple of different draws) to figure out how to fit everything into a coherent story, but I’m getting the hang of it, and the process is actually pretty fun.

As for the spring shorts challenge, it’s Memorial Day today, which means that the challenge is basically over. I only ended up writing four stories, which is a lot less than what I’d hoped to write, but I think these will turn out really well after I rework them a bit, so I’m counting it as a partial success.

For June, I plan to write two more short stories in order to fill up the buffer. My writing group meets once a month, so with two more stories to critique in June, that will give me a buffer of six months by the time July rolls around. I also plan to fix up all four of these spring shorts stories and put them on submission for the next few months, before I publish them as free singles.

I will try to do a new short story each month, in order to keep the buffer at six months, but I may do another short story nanowrimo this year if it turns out that I need more. As far as other WIPs are concerned, though, after I write these next two stories in June, I’m going to go back to novels. My plan right now is to write the first three chapters of The Sword Bearer and Captive of the Falconstar by the fourth of July, then decide whether to go on with one of those or to keep working on Children of the Starry Sea.

Spring Shorts Story #3: Christopher Columbus, Wildcatter

Wow, has it really been almost three weeks since I finished another short story? I really need to get back into the game. Still, this was a fun one, and I’m really looking forward to turning it into something great.

As with the two previous stories, I used the Mythulu cards to come up with this one. Here’s what I drew:

STATISTIC: The face, pile, voice, or sacrifice that gives personal meaning to a problem previously encountered and ignored.
EXPLORER: Enchanted by novelty. Energized by challenge. Brave, joyful, and resilient. Worst thing that can happen is for life to become too predictable.
GHOST LIMB: When amputees receive nerve signals from non-existant limbs.
MINE: Gleaning useful or shiny resources from the earth. Runoff from mines causes ecologically devastating pollution.
DEBTOR: One who has received something they cannot yet repay. Leads to either accountability or slvaery. Not free to pursue their own heart until absolved.
WATER: Currency of life. Symbolizes connection. Breaks boundaries. Patient, responsive, nurturing.
VIBRATING: A gentle resonant sumble. Usually felt when some kind of energy is flowing freely, whether sound, electricity, or emotion.
RECOVERING: Half-healed from some kind of significant damage.
FUZZY: A soft, comforting layer associated with innocent living things.
ADORABLE: Too cute to be taken seriously. Cannot intimidate others, no matter how hard they try. Their boundaries are frequently ignored.
LOUD: Showy in a way that interrupts others. Uncomfortably irreverent, noisy, or insistent.
HUNGRY: Ravenous and/or so desperately poor that they cannot afford food.
TEMPLE: Home of the gods. Point of access where higher powers can be found and petitioned.
MONK: Offers total forgiveness. Able to see through deception, especially self-deception. Invites, but never forces.
THRESHOLD: A Doorway that leads to a new life. Once you cross a threshold, you cannot return the same.
WIND: Represents connection to the unknown. Responsible for storms, pollinations, erosion. Influences evolution, spread of disease, and pollution dispersal.

For most of these elements, I ignored the flavor text altogether. With “statistic,” for example, all I did was start the story off with a random statistic I heard somewhere. No idea if it’s actually true, but hey, it makes for a great story. And with “threshold,” I traded out the card I’d actually drawn with one that worked much better. Also, I’m not entirely sure how “wind” fits in with the rest of it, but it feels right.

I’m going to keep going through with these Mythulu-inspired stories until I’ve used all of the cards. That definitely won’t happen until after Memorial Day, which I’ve marked as the end of this Spring Shorts challenge, but I’ll keep track of which cards I’ve already used and continue to write short stories on the side. With luck, I’ll be able to write at least one more story here, and I may keep it up for a while in the summer just until I’ve filled up the buffer in my publishing schedule. But more about that in a later post.

Spring Shorts Story #2: Prison of Dreams

It’s been a little crazy over here, which is probably why I’ve found it so difficult to write lately. It’s not a function of time so much as brainspace, and I really need to find ways to refill the creative well. But I did manage to finish another story this week, and I think it has real potential. Next step: writing group.

This is another Mythulu-inspired story, and I ended up using more cards for this one than any other story I’ve written. Here are the cards I used:

DREAM: A space where anything is possible but nothing lasts. Often inspires discovery and change elsewhere.
SCAVENGER: Symbolizes poverty of mind. Lives on the leftovers of greatness because they are unable to create something new.
DATA: The element you draw next is the primary means for carrying data. (Draw +1 Element)
- MACHINE: The messy, awkward, expensive try-fail attempts of those who elevate a race to god-like status.
HIBERNATES: Enters a standby state with low power usage to survive extreme conditions. Most animals cannot heal during hibernation.
AWAKE: Pulled from sleep, animated, enlightened. A higher state of consciousness.
ARTIST: Passionately engaged in a profession that doesn’t pay. Artists are soul-healers and their work transcends political sides.
CASTE: Systemized, religiously justified discrimination.
LOVER: The other self. True lovers always fill a hole. Stronger together than the sum of the parts.
METALLOID: A non-metal element that behaves like metal. Conductive, fusible, and/or ductile. Trouble being categorized or fitting in is usually connected to extraordinary abilities.
RUST: Deterioration caused by extended contact with water, air, or acid. Threatens functionality. Difficult to restore.
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: A captive who has developed sympathy for their tormentor.

I was worried at first that this short story would expand into something longer, but I managed to keep the first draft under 5,600 words. If I can get it under 5,000, so much the better. I really do feel like it could benefit from another set of eyes looking at it, so I’m going to hold off on sending it anywhere.

Dean Wesley Smith likes to boast how in the early days of his writing career, he would submit his stories to the editors before he workshopped them in his writing group, and often the things that his writing group criticized were things that the editors loved. But he also says that writers should never revise their work, and that anyone who reads critically needs to “go get help. And I mean real help, professional help, because you have lost all ability to see a story and are trapped by the little black marks on the paper.” In fact, some of the worst writing and publishing advice I have ever heard has come from Dean Wesley Smith, so at this point I feel no compulsion to follow anything he says that doesn’t make sense on its face. But hey, he’s the guy who always tells us to turn off our critical minds, so that’s really just following his advice.

(The crazy thing is that some of the best writing and publishing advice I’ve ever heard has also come from Dean, which makes his bad advice—and it is truly bad—all the more puzzling. How can someone who knows so much also be so wrong? I’ve come to my own conclusions about that, but this is a public blog, so I’ll refrain from posting my thoughts on the subject here.)

In any case, I’ve been really happy with the feedback from my current writing group, so from now on I think I’m going to workshop all of my short stories through there before publishing or submitting them. And I look forward to getting their feedback on this one, because even though I think it turned out pretty good, it needs an extra something and I’m not sure what.

As for the next story, I will try to use just as many cards as I did with this one, since my goal for this writing challenge is to use all of the cards in the deck. But there are a lot of cards, so it’s entirely possible that I won’t end up doing that. Should be fun, though.

Spring Shorts 2022 Story #1: “Blight of Empire”

Finished the first short story of the writing challenge that I’m calling Spring Shorts 2022, which is to write 12 short stories before Memorial Day. This one is titled “Blight of Empire,” and it takes place in the distant future, where the galaxy is full of failed terraforming projects and a massive galactic empire rules almost everything. I used the Mythulu cards with this one, and here are the cards I drew:

AMPHIBIOUS: Adapted to live in two distinctly different environments. Likes to live on the threshold. (Draw +2 Habitat)
- CAVE: Isolated biome that would survive even if the sun died. Represents impressive adaptability and unnecessary paranoia.
- TERRAFORMED: Repurposed to support a specific, narrow spectrum of life. Can be forced, or part of natural biome evolution.
FESTERING: Open wound that has become infected and resists healing. Threatens the whole entity.
FIRE: Symbolizes passion. Has a dual nature. On one side, brings protection, healing, sanitation. On the other, destruction.
GODPARENT: Legally responsible for a child if parents die or are incapacitated. Named at birth and expected to participate in child’s life from the beginning.
INVENTOR: The one who pays the price to elevate their people. Graced with curiosity and unusual resilience to disappointment.
HUMID: Something is infused into the air and the levels fluctuate. Draw 1 Element to decide what’s floating around. (Draw +1 Element)
- FUNGUS: More potent than plants, with all the same variations–edible, poisonous, medicine, entheogen. Overall, a tool for removing festering excess.

I had to draw the cards a couple of times before I came up with a good story idea. From now on, I’m going to go through each of the six decks, drawing the top three and choosing the one that seems most interesting. If I need to pick another card from that deck, it’ll be from the other two.

This story ended up going in a completely different direction than I thought it would, which was interesting. A lot of discovery writing with this one, which was a good change of pace. For the last month, I think I’ve been trying to write unsuccessfully through a general drought of creativity, but these short story exercises are helping to stimulate my creative mind again. Just need to make sure to keep filling the well.

Other than that, things have been kind of crazy around here. We have a long-term plumbing problem that just flared up again, and half the house’s plumbing is unusable. Unfortunately, that includes the washing machine, and our baby is in the middle of potty training. My wife has an uncle who works as a maintenance guy at BYU, and he’s been a huge help, but each day has been a different plumbing adventure. Later this week, we’re going to remove a section of cast iron pipe and run a snake up through it backwards, and maybe a shop vac too. I just hope the sewer pipe hasn’t been leaking under the foundation (knock on wood).

On the publishing front, I was planning to release a short story this week, but that got pushed back due to all this craziness. I do have my fourth short story collection up for preorder, though, so that’s something. Also ran a massive promo last week for Bringing Stella Home, which I recently relaunched with a new cover.

I think I’m going to keep using the Mythulu cards for this Spring Shorts 2022 writing challenge. In fact, I’m going to try to use all of the cards, just for the fun of it. That means that none of the cards I used for this story will show up again. I’ve already drawn a few base stories, and come up with some intriguing combinations. Very excited to write, if all this other life stuff will just calm down!

#GiveThanks Day Four

(45) I’m grateful for Jordan Peterson and his courage to speak the truth as he sees it, even in the face of incredible opposition.

(46) I’m grateful for the “intellectual dark web” and how they show that there are still intelligent people who can discuss important issues with those with whom they disagree.

(47) I’m grateful for the voices in the alternative media that push back against the gaslighting of the mainstream media.

(48) On a less political note, I’m grateful for Mike Duncan and his History of Rome podcast, which taught me far more about the Romans and their impact on our world than my college education ever did.

(49) I’m also grateful for Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, which has done the same thing for the history of our modern era.

(50) I’m grateful for Dan Carlin and his numerous podcasts, especially Hardcore History.

(51) I’m grateful for the Writing Excuses podcast, which was very influential in how I developed my writing craft back when I was just getting started.

(52) I’m grateful for the Six Figure Authors podcast and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing podcast, and the excellent marketing and publishing ideas that they give me.

(53) I’m grateful for the Sell More Books Show and how it helps me to stay up to date with what’s happening in indie publishing.

(54) I’m grateful for the Mythulu cards that my wife got me for my birthday, and how they’ve helped me this nanowrimo to come up with some great story ideas.

(55) I’m grateful for Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, and the influence they were in helping me to decide to self publish back in 2011.

(56) I’m grateful for Life, the Universe, and Everything, and how that conference was and continues to be critical in shaping my writing career.

(57) I’m grateful for the writing group that I was fortunate enough to marry into, and the good advice and feedback that I receive from it.

(58) I’m grateful for Quark, BYU’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, and for how it provided me with a community of like-minded geeks and aspiring writers in college.

(59) I’m grateful for Leading Edge and the opportunity that I had to read for their slushpile, back when I was still learning my craft.

(60) I’m grateful for all of the other science fiction conventions I’ve been able to attend over the years, including Worldcon, World Fantasy, FanX, CONduit, and others.

NaNoWriMo 2020 Day Twenty-One

Words written: 1,763
Total words written: 30,853
Stories written: 6
Total words behind: 4,147

I’ve been hitting a lot of resistance whenever I try to write a story that’s inspired by drawing Mythulu cards. I suspect that’s because my subconscious mind hasn’t had that much time to work on the story, so the first creation is happening largely when I put words on the page. I used to consider myself a discovery writer, but now I think that my writing is a lot better when I take the time to prewrite—and yes, that includes outlining.

Still, I really like where this story is going. I think it’s going to be a good one.